Why the New York Yankees Are the Greatest: Part Six

In late 1948, Del Webb and Dan Topping announced that they had hired Casey Stengel to manage the New York Yankees. It was hard for anyone to take them seriously. 

Everyone thought Stengel would be just another interim guy, as Bucky Harris had been for two years, after Joe McCarthy left the Yanks.

Stengel had been around baseball since early in the century. After having considered dentistry as a career, the big handed Casey took to playing outfield and would manage to find a place with four different teams for 14 seasons.

Stengel was a good player, but not exceptional, finishing his career with a .284 batting average. The most notable baseball feat in his playing career was an inside-the-park home run in the 1923 World Series. 

Casey was playing for the New York Giants then. Ironically, he was playing against the New York Yankees in what would be the first world championship for the American League team.

Casey was only 32 years old in 1923. But in the film of him rounding the bases, he looked like an old man and it seemed uncertain if he would ever score. He ran bow legged and erratically and it was funny to watch.

Casey always seemed funny and sometimes was so purposefully. As in the famous incident when he was being booed unmercifully. He caught a small bird and surreptitiously placed it in his cap. 

As he came to bat he bowed low to the fans, doffing his cap and giving them the bird, literally.

So when Webb and Topping announced this baseball clown to the New York press, no one was sure what to make of it. It wasn’t that Stengel had no managerial experience.

Casey had managed nine seasons in the major leagues before he joined the Yankees.  All had been in the National League and only one time had his team finished above .500.

But he had also managed in the Pacific Coast League, the closest thing to the majors at that time. And in 1948, he had led a very old Oakland Oaks team to the PCL pennant.

But when the Yankees hired him he was 58 years old and about the only acknowledge-ment he got was that he was unconventional. 

Casey’s face was a maze of wrinkles and bumps. His hands were very large and misshapen. His nose and ears seemed to belong on a much larger head.

But he came to a Yankee team that was laden with talent. There was Joe DiMaggio and a young Yogi Berra. Phil Rizzuto was established at shortstop and Tommy Henrich, Bobby Brown and Jerry Coleman completed the infield on his first team. 

Hank Bauer, Gene Woodling and big Cliff Mapes joined Joe D in the outfield. Tommy Byrne, Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi and Eddie Lopat led the pitching corps.

But Stengel soon proved that “regular” had a different meaning for him. He had a theory he had developed in the PCL – platooning. He thought the greatest success would be found by using left handed hitters against right handed pitchers and vice versa. 

So, in 1949, only Rizzuto played more than 116 games.  Admittedly Dimaggio was hurt for a long part of that season or he would have played more. But Stengel was utilizing a system that he believed in and that most players almost universally hated.

Stengel was also quick to jerk a starting pitcher and one of the first managers to use situational relief pitching.  He was also a devotee of small ball, bunting, hit and run and station to station baseball such as he had grown up with in the early years of the 20th Century.

And, in one of his most controversial moves, he once took Joe Dimaggio out in the middle of an inning for a defensive replacement. Joe was so embarrassed he never forgave Stengel and the two never got along.

Stengel continued to appear as a clown, making faces at the newspaper photographers and newsreel cameras, slowly walking to the pitcher’s mound in a uniform that appeared several sizes too big and talking in a way no one had ever heard before.

It came to be called "Stengelese" and it can be understood best only through examples:

“Line up alphabetically according to height.”

“Don’t cut my throat, I might want to do that later myself.”

“He’s the greatest hitter in the game, until you play him.”  (Referring to Jerry Lumpe)

“You probably don’t know this, but one of us has just been traded.” (As manager to outfielder Bob Cerv)

“Good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice versa.”

“I don’t like them fellas that drive in two runs and let in three.”

“If we are going to win the pennant, we’ve got to start thinking we’re not as good as we think we are.”

“Most people my age are dead, you can look it up.”

“I’ll never make the mistake of being this old again.” (On being fired at age 70)

But Stengel was not a clown.  He was a great baseball mind and knew how to teach the game.  He was an innovator, being the first to start an instructional league where the best young Yankee talent was groomed to be big leaguers.

Some have passed off his success as being nothing but luck, being in the right place at the right time.  He came to New York at a time when the talent was awesome and he stayed to see the likes of Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Billy Martin, Elston Howard, Roger Maris, Moose Skowron, Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek, etc.

Beginning in 1949 Stengel led the Yankees to five straight World Series victories.  After these five straight trips to the fall classic the Yankees finished second in 1954 to the Cleveland Indians.

But that Indians team won 111 games in a 154 game season, led by pitchers, Bob Feller, Early Wynn and Mike Garcia.  The Yankees had won 103 games that season, more than in any of Stengel's first five seasons.

In 1955 the Yankees won the pennant again and finally lost to the Brooklyn Dodgers, the first time Brooklyn had ever beaten the Yankees in the Series.

Stengel would go on to win ten pennants and seven World Series in his twelve years in New York.  His final season was 1960 when the Yankees went to the Series again.  They lost to Pittsburgh on Bill Mazeroski’s ninth inning home run in the seventh game.

That was the first walk off home run in World Series history and was the deciding factor in a Series in which the Yankees had dominated the Pirates in every way except the final outcome.

In the seven games of Stengel’s final World Series his team scored 52 runs to 21 for the Pirates.  But he had made a curious decision regarding his ace pitcher.

Whitey Ford pitched two shutouts in the 1960 World Series. But inexplicably Stengel had not started Ford until the third game, meaning that Ford could only pitch one more game in the Series, the sixth game.

If Ford had started the first game, he would have pitched the fourth and been ready for game seven if necessary. But Stengel chose not to use his ace in this way and it cost him the Series and his job in New York.

Arguments can go on as to whether Joe McCarthy or Casey Stengel was the greatest Yankee manager. They both won seven world championships for New York. But Stengel won more pennants.  No other team can claim a personality such as Casey Stengel and he certainly was a major reason the Yankees are the greatest team ever.